


up to snuff

by voksen



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-08
Updated: 2014-04-08
Packaged: 2018-01-18 16:56:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1435900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voksen/pseuds/voksen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>i'm sorry for everything</p></blockquote>





	up to snuff

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tvglow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tvglow/gifts).



The snuffbox lies full and untouched in the pocket of Javert's greatcoat for nearly three months. There are days he almost forgets it is there -- and then he will walk past a tobacconist, or turn a corner too quickly so that it raps against his thigh, or out of the corner of his eye see the familiar flash of silver in another man's hand and find his own too empty. Or, worst of all, he will finish some small task or other: a case closed, a man jailed on just cause, the law upheld as it should be; he will feel a dark shadow of his old exhilaration, and know that once he would have rewarded himself without thought for a job well done. 

Then it weighs as heavily in his pocket as his heart seems to within his chest, for it has been almost a year since Javert left his old snuffbox, along with his hat, on the parapet guarding the Seine between the Pont-au-Change and the Pont Notre-Dame. He had gone without one and without complaint from then until Christmas. It had seemed only fitting, to live without the rewards he had once permitted himself, once he had seen that they had been long undeserved; to punish himself instead with thought. And he has thought; he has not been able to _stop_ thinking; and he has seen in every thief's face the specter of Jean Valjean, and in every ragged whore's dress a Magdalene; and he has tried to deal with them -- fairly. Honestly. 

Over time it has grown more bearable, if not exactly easier, and though his steps have sometimes taken him to the riverbanks again, he has never again felt incapable of continuing, though he has felt constantly unworthy. He cannot resign, in any case; the snuffbox itself is proof enough of that.

Valjean had given it to him, hastily pressed into his hand with a mumbled greeting, a touch of glove on glove, a quick glance that was almost a smile. They had seen each other only briefly, in the street, Valjean hurrying to his daughter's home, Javert on an inconsequential errand which he does not now recall. It had snowed that morning, but the afternoon had been fine and sunny. He remembers the sight of Valjean's footprints pressed into the snow: an average size, the heel-edge of the left worn just enough to mark it as his.

It had been wrapped in a twist of colored paper, leaving no doubt possible that it was meant as a gift, and this had startled Javert long enough for Valjean to disappear around the corner before he could react -- in hindsight, he wonders if that had been Valjean's purpose in doing it. But he had opened it there on the street, driven by curiosity, and found the accursed snuffbox: plain and well made, like the one he had lost, and yet dissimilar enough that any fancy they were the same was impossible. It had gone into one pocket; the blue scrap of paper into another.

He had not known what it meant then; he is no closer, despite months of painful consideration, to guessing at what it means now. The paper serves as a bookmark in the Bible he has been laboring through, and the snuffbox as a millstone in his pocket, and Valjean at once as a faulty compass needle and the only solid ground he has. It is enough to drive a man to distraction. 

He thinks of it again, now, waiting in the street in the darkness of the early spring evening, not so far from the corner where he had stopped beneath the lamp that June a lifetime ago to watch Valjean go up to set his affairs in order. Now he does not wait for Valjean; Valjean waits for him, for it is Wednesday night and it has become -- a habit between them, a custom. Months ago, Javert, caught up in the lingering, painful shreds of his anger and disbelief, had called it his parole and regretted it even as the words left his mouth. Valjean had looked at him and said nothing, but there had been a strange distance about him that had only halfway dissipated when Javert choked down his shame and apologized. 

He still feels it as an obligation, although it is both more and less; there are chains on him, even if they weigh on what newborn, shriveled soul he has, instead of on ankle and wrist and throat. And, while he _cannot_ turn away from Valjean lest he choke on them, he finds he does not want to; that, being honest with himself as he must, he has not wanted to for some time. Knocking at that door, going up to Valjean's apartment, being let in with words of welcome, breaking bread with him; they have all become a parole, in truth, but a parole that is a reward in itself; a reward he knows he does not deserve. He has never worked so hard and found himself so lacking.

But even as Javert has grown greedy, Valjean has been fading around the edges; since his daughter and her husband left for the south, his smiles, always subtle, have dimmed, his walk is slower, his mood more distant. He hides it well, but not well enough. For Javert knows him too well, and he has seen this before; not in years, not since he left the bagne for the police, but he remembers how men (though he had not thought of them as men, then) had now and then gone quiet and withdrawn; had eaten less and less and fallen back invisible into the crowd. He remembers, with a chill at the back of his neck that has nothing to do with the damp weather, how -- now and then -- one or another of the lifers would pick a fight with a guard and go willingly to the wall to meet the guns.

And so Valjean has trapped him again, he thinks wretchedly, damn the man; but the old memories, once roused, refuse to leave him in peace. Within minutes he is driven out of the shadows and beneath the streetlamps by his own shadow. He crosses the street quickly, shoulders set, head up, and raps at the door as if he has every right to be there. If he is lying to himself, it is for Valjean's sake. That is no longer so unusual.

Even on his guard against it, Javert feels the same swell of warmth within him when Valjean opens his door; he tries to push it back, gritting his teeth as he offers a painful smile in response to Valjean's tired one. The world is bad enough without his own body betraying him.

He struggles with it a moment too long; the silence turns heavy between them. "Have you eaten?" Valjean asks into it, turning away, towards the kitchen. 

It must be a joke: Javert had always the one to ask Valjean that, for often he had forgotten, or had not been hungry, or some other excuse -- so the words are familiar enough, the timing almost correct. But he has never heard Valjean attempt a joke before, and it catches him off guard, gaping at Valjean's back like an idiot. "I--" he begins, his mind blank, but swallows before he can stammer aloud or otherwise make a ninny of himself more than he already has. "--have not."

Shaking off his astonishment, he removes his hat and hangs it up, then follows Valjean to the kitchen. The fire is dead in the stove, which accounts for the uncomfortable chill in the apartment; it is nearly as cold inside as out. Javert slants a glance at Valjean, who is busy at the table, then strikes a lucifer without asking, lights the tinder, and piles the stove high. It will take hours to truly warm the place; he catches himself feeling pleased at the excuse to linger, to make sure Valjean is comfortable, even against his preference; to stay in his company. He scowls ferociously at the stove, thrusting his hands over the fire as if he could force it to heat the air more quickly by his will alone.

Behind him, the clatter of dishes and silver stops. He expects the sound of Valjean's chair scraping against the floor that will tell him he has a second or two to compose himself before he has to face him; instead, Valjean takes a few slow steps and touches Javert's arm, gently, tentatively.

Valjean's hand feels heavier than iron, though in truth it barely brushes him. They do not touch often, though Javert has never taken notice of it before - it is only the presence that makes the absence notable. And why should they touch? If they are friends, which is something he would not claim, neither of them are given to ridiculous sentimentality -- he checks himself abruptly, an image of Valjean and the girl coming inorexably to mind; Valjean's hand on her shoulder, guiding her through the crowd, his lingering, affectionate gaze. Fine, then: for Valjean it is not ridiculous-- but that he, Javert, should want such a thing-- that he should find himself aching for it-- 

"Will you eat?" Valjean asks quietly.

"Yes," Javert replies, too bluntly; aware that he sounds despicably ungrateful for Valjean's food and his concern alike. But the alternative is confession of the mess of things he should not feel and should not do, and while once he might have turned to that immediately -- the urge still lingers in him to bow his head and ask for penance to make it right -- he finds that he would rather do violence to his nature a hundred times than burden Valjean with unasked for trouble. 

Brushing wood dust off of his hands, he steps away from the stove and Valjean's hand, feeling the loss of each even through his coat, and seats himself in his usual chair. Valjean joins him a moment later and says a blessing over the food that Javert, as always, does his best to take to heart. They eat in silence: Valjean's portress is a decent if unexceptional cook and there is always enough, so it rarely inspires comment. 

The quiet, like the meal, is far from unusual, though Javert grows more uncomfortably aware with each mouthful that it is his mood rather than Valjean's that fuels it tonight; Valjean had seemed almost happy earlier; had tried a joke, even. He swallows hard around a bite of bread, steels himself, and says: "You seem in a good mood tonight, Valjean." It comes out more curtly than he had intended, and he curses himself under his breath: he was not meant for this, he does not fit here, no matter how hard he has tried to change himself to fit into a different world. Today, especially, it seems that he cannot help but do wrong.

Valjean glances up at him; there's a bit of startled wariness about him that strengthens the chill in Javert's stomach, but then -- inexplicably -- his face relaxes and he smiles, warm and earnest, changing the tired wrinkles at his eyes to something completely different. "Yes," he says. "I suppose I am." Setting down the bread which he had been about to dip into his stew, he cleans his hands on his napkin and reaches into his waistcoat, producing a folded sheaf of paper. "I had a letter from Cosette this morning."

That fits with the conclusion Javert had already drawn about the timing of the onset of Valjean's melancholy well enough. "And?" he says, almost hating himself for the way he covets that smile, that same kind look that had been the destruction of his entire life, like a dog leaning into its master's whip.

Valjean's fond smile lingers; he smooths the paper between his fingers, but does not open it; no doubt he has it memorized already, to the last word. "They are safely arrived in Provence;" he says, "the warm air is doing them both good; Marius' injuries are healing more swiftly; the food is wonderful and the gardens are doing well; they may go berrying in a month or two -- she has always loved strawberries -- she sends her love. She is thinking of me."

He is speaking before he can think better of it. "Did you think she would not?" Valjean's eyes widen slightly, but Javert, incredulous, presses on: "Did you think she would forget you entirely?" There's a slight shift in Valjean's expression, a downward twitch of his lips, and Javert knows it at once for the tell it is. "You did," he says, unable to hold back in the face of his shock -- and while it is true he has little enough knowledge of love, and less of children and their parents, he finds that within him, the graven truths he had once held as eternal have been replaced by at least one certainty besides the superiority of heavenly law: once someone had begun to love Jean Valjean, it must be impossible to stop. He cannot conceive of any way it could happen. The girl would have to be immeasurably ungrateful, and since he raised her, surely she could not be--

"Well," Valjean says, slowly, awkwardly, the smile gone from his face and his eyes cast down, "she has her husband to protect her now. She doesn't need an old con--"

"Don't," Javert snaps, feeling something wild growing inside him; feeling the impossible urge to grasp Valjean and pull him close and snarl into his face, even though to lay hands on him like that, to assault him, is inconceivable. But the change in him must show on his face or in his voice, for Valjean subsides, staring at him with open surprise. "Don't-- don't call yourself that."

Valjean presses his lips together for a moment before answering. "But that is what I am," he says, "You know that. You know that denying it will not change -- that the past cannot change."

He could shake Valjean's teeth from his head. "But the world can change around you," he says. He should know that much at least, _God_ , they both should know that. Why does Valjean refuse to see it, when it was he who forced it upon Javert? "No one is looking for Jean Valjean. No one will find him, here or anywhere else." He's told Valjean that before; he must find more now. "They laughed at me, when I thought I saw you years ago; everyone knows you died on that ship." The memory is bitter enough; the whispered jeers just out of earshot, the condescending looks from his superiors, but he presses on. "And even if that is your past, well, what of it? Is a husband and a father worth less than a husband alone?"

"If Cosette knew who--"

"She knows who you are," Javert says. He is being unspeakably rude and he knows it; beneath his fury a horror at himself is growing: how has he become this sort of man? and how can it be that this, this _insubordination_ is possible at all? But Valjean's brow is drawn tight with fear, and Javert clenches his fist unconsciously, as if he actually had his collar in hand. "She has always known who you are." His voice is too harsh, but he finds himself incapable of moderating it. "You only have to see how she looks at you to know it." 

Valjean's expression does not clear, and Javert feels his own face darkening, half with embarrassment at his own actions, half with obscene, unforgivable anger that Valjean could force him to the brink of -- of insanity -- without comprehending in himself what he forced Javert to see. "If you think," he says, though it is almost more of a growl, now, "if you think that a girl you raised with your own hands from a house like that -- yes, Valjean, I saw that house, I know those fiends -- who you gave everything for -- who you risked your life for --" Despite himself he stumbles over his own words, his eyes falling from Valjean's as the weight of his guilt redoubles itself. "Whose mother you saved -- yes, saved! If you think that girl is blinder than _I_ , that she could not see you for who you are, without being fooled by what you had done, Jean Valjean -- you are an _idiot_ , a fool, you--"

He raises his glance again to find that Valjean is staring at him as if he has grown a second head, the fear faded into a confused shock that Javert knows too well, having felt it himself. He falters to a stop, his fists clenched tight and braced on the table, his shoulders set, and forces himself to keep his chin up and his body in the seat. "I," he says, helplessly, and stops again. He does not know how to apologize for this. He has no conception of how someone who has done what he has done should be punished; he had never before imagined anyone capable of it. The enormity of it wells within him, extinguishing the rage and leaving only shame behind.

Valjean shakes his head. His hands are clasped before him; his tongue flickers over his lips briefly, and the natural policeman's instinct in Javert chatters on relentlessly and inextinguishably about nervousness and deflection. "Cosette," he says, "Cosette-- does not know. She has forgotten everything about that place. It is for the best that she not remember, that she should only ever have been happy. I don't speak of her mother. She would not understand-- how could she understand?" 

"She knows you are good," he says. "When she knows what you did for that boy; why should she be troubled that years ago you did -- something -- to try to save some other -- people?" It stings his conscience to trip around the facts, but he cannot risk offending Valjean again, when he is already so far beyond the pale.

Valjean says nothing. It is a distinctly incriminating silence.

"You didn't tell her," Javert says blankly. Valjean looks down at his hands.

The idea is baffling, almost inconceivable, and yet by the way Valjean is acting it must be true. But why? Surely anyone, having accomplished the impossible, and in such a fashion, would want it to be known -- would want to be thanked, or at least acknowledged -- to be respected for it. He cannot make sense of it.

"I didn't want them to know."

Them-- "You mean to say that the boy doesn't know--"

Valjean's cheeks are pink with -- embarrassment? Shame? In any case he cannot remember ever having seen him blush before; always, Valjean has been collected and calm, in supremacy and surrender alike, and the sight leaves him briefly speechless; he grasps for words for long seconds. "How does he imagine--" No; what fancy the idiot lawyer imagines in place of the truth hardly matters. "Why?"

"It would have been interfering," Valjean says, quietly, earnestly, and entirely as if he believes plucking the boy from his certain death and dragging him halfway across the city had been nothing of the sort. "They should be happy together. I have no place in that happiness; she is safer with him, away from me. He can give her things I never could."

"I doubt that," Javert says without thinking, then winces.

Valjean manages a smile, though it doesn't touch his eyes and does more to make him look sad and tired than anything else. "He is a baron," he says. "She can be part of the world, now that she is a baroness."

"And you were a mayor." The words are bitter -- and they must sound it, for Valjean is looking at him strangely again. Perhaps it is just that they have not spoken so openly of Montreuil, save for an insufficient, fumbling apology in that horrible first week that Javert still cringes to think of. "You have as much a place in that world as Monsieur the Baron, and as much a place in that -- that happiness."

"That was never really my place," Valjean says, "and I was never really that man."

For a long moment Javert is speechless again, this time fumbling not with embarrassment or anger but with horror: it is true, it is all true; Valjean does not understand his own undeniable, impossible respectability in the slightest; he thinks _himself_ the unworthy one, and has done all along. He approaches this solution with the same visceral dread with which he had confronted his own misunderstanding; but there is no other explanation possible. He thinks the girl will reject him because he has already rejected himself.

"You," he says finally, certain that he will not say what needs to be said, but doubly certain that it is his duty to make the attempt, "you were. You made that place; you were good enough to fit into it. Yes-- you, Jean Valjean. It does not matter what you called yourself; you gave those people honest work. You looked after them. You saved them, and they respected you, and I destroyed that. Well! I can't change that. But I can tell you, monsieur, that you have looked after the girl, and saved her, and made her happy. And if I let you deny it, I will have done it again. And I have tried too hard to fix the -- errors -- of my past to go about repeating them as if nothing had changed. As if this was the same world we lived in ten years ago."

Valjean thinks he is mad, he can see it in his eyes, that uncomprehending concern and worry with which a man such as him might look at any raving fool, trying to judge how best to offer pity and aid. Something grows cold and frigid in the pit of his stomach and he scowls, looking away. He had known that to try was to fail, and yet it stings more badly than he had expected to be proved right; to be proved useless; to see that there is perhaps no point to all -- to any of this struggle.

Something brushes the back of his hand unexpectedly and he jolts back to himself to find that Valjean has reached across the table and set his hand over Javert's; as he stares down at it, Valjean's thumb curls gently beneath his palm. "Javert," he says. His voice is gentle -- he cannot stand it, he will go as mad as Valjean thinks he already is should Valjean pity him outright -- and yet he feels as if he is falling into that gentleness like he had hungered for Valjean's touch earlier, a blind animal need that he cannot understand. "Javert. The world is the same. It is you who have changed."

"The world should change," he finds himself saying, and what would have been blasphemy to him a year past rings truer to him now than any of the strictures that had seemed so self-evident for all his life. "And it has. You have changed it. Every kindness is a change. I knew it before -- every good thing you did, every bit of mercy, yes! I saw it even then, I saw how it would change things and set them upside down, one man, one woman, one child at a time. I did not-- I did not understand that that was what had to be, that you were undoing the injustices that you saw, that I had blinded myself to -- but I knew you, Valjean. And I know you now, and you are a good man. And if I have changed, then it is because of you." If I am alive, it is because of you -- he does not say it; Valjean does not need a heavier burden on his shoulders than he already bears.

When the silence grows too long, he looks up to find that Valjean is still watching him; his eyes are dark and warm and terrifying with something that does not look quite like pity any longer. "You have changed," he says again, smiling slightly, and his hand tightens -- just a little -- around Javert's, and stops his breath. "But you think better of me than I deserve."

Javert shakes his head wordlessly; but when has he ever been able to outargue Valjean? Still, this time he is certain he is right. If he had always before been certain he was right -- he will not think of that. This time he must be; and if he must again go behind Valjean's back to see that things are right and proper, he will do it. It is not the same. It is not the same at all. He will do what he must do not from spite, but for justice -- true justice.

"Well," says Valjean at last, lifting his hand from Javert's with a lingering brush of fingers that sends Javert's heart racing, "in any case, the stew will soon be cold." He smiles briefly, an embarrassed little quirk of his lips, and picks up his bread again.

Javert follows his lead immediately, bowing his head over his bowl as if he did not want to have to meet his eyes. Let Valjean think him embarrassed also. There is enough truth in it that it should be easy to believe; he can hardly credit it himself how easy it still is for Valjean to draw out his emotions and throw him out of all control without even meaning to do so. But with their eyes cast down and focused on eating, Valjean does not notice when Javert's gaze drifts from his bowl to the letter left safely on the side of the table.

 

With the girl gone, Valjean will have no housekeeper -- Javert had thought it was a preference for privacy or austerity, but now finds himself wondering if it is a preference for deprivation -- and so when they have finished with their dinner at last, they wash the dishes side by side; or, rather, Valjean washes and Javert dries them and stacks them back on the portress's tray. The uncommented-upon return to routine calms Javert's nerves somewhat, though he is more aware than ever, after the touch of Valjean's hand earlier, that they stand shoulder to shoulder.

When that is done, Valjean carries the tray downstairs; Javert checks on the stove and pokes the fire vigorously so that it blazes up still higher. Some of the chill is out of the air by now, and perhaps Valjean has warmer blood than he, but there is a limit. Satisfied with it at last, he crosses back to the table and takes up the girl's letter, flipping quickly through the pages: the contents are much as Valjean had reported, if a great deal more detailed, and not of interest to him. But her address in Provence is written carefully below the flourishing signature, a clear invitation that he suspects Valjean will just as carefully ignore, and he withdraws pencil and notepad from his coat pocket and jots it down.

He knows the cadence of Valjean's footsteps well; when he hears them on the landing, he sets the letter to rights and replaces it exactly where it was left, then returns to the stove. Valjean comes in a moment later and goes to the table, himself; Javert hears the shuffling of paper as the letter vanishes back into his waistcoat and surprises himself by not feeling a speck of guilt at the whole business.

"Are you still cold, Javert?"

"Are you not?"

"Not particularly. Will you at least give up your coat?"

It is true that he no longer needs it, and if he stays longer it will become uncomfortable. He ought not to stay; he ought not to leave Valjean alone: again he finds himself at the dilemma, but the letter and the address in his pocket have given him a sense of purpose and renewed duty, and there is only one answer possible, although it is unsettling; he had not thought to find reward in service again, in a world where he must be so constantly torn between two masters. 

Scowling at his own thoughts, he unbuttons his coat and shrugs it from his shoulders, then turns, intending to go into the hall and hang it up, and finds that Valjean is closer than he had thought -- as if he had intended to help Javert off with the coat, or take it from him like a servant -- and accidentally catches him across the knees with the skirt of it.

Valjean winces slightly, but cuts across Javert's half-formed apology with a shake of his head. "I'm fine," he says. "Truly. But what do you keep in there?" His smile is tentative, the joke hesitant -- but his good humor of earlier in the evening is back, or at least he is trying hard for it, and Javert finds himself flustered again.

He reaches into the pocket of his coat without thinking; his hand closes over something hard and metal, and he pulls it out: that damned snuffbox.

"Oh," says Valjean, and halfway smiles again, the second time it has been directed at Javert in as many minutes. "Do you like it, then?"

"Yes," Javert says helplessly.

"And the brand is all right?"

He cannot possibly admit that he has not once used Valjean's present. "Fine," he says, and justifies it under the idea that it stands to reason that Valjean would have purchased better snuff for someone else than Javert would have bought for himself.

"I had noticed," Valjean says, still looking at the box in Javert's hand as if he has not noticed how intensely uncomfortable the entire situation is, "that I had not seen you with yours in some time; I remembered from -- before -- that you were fond of snuff. I am sorry for the surprise. I thought for a while perhaps you had not liked it."

"I do," Javert mutters. He does not want to look ungrateful, or spoil Valjean's attempt at lightening the mood, or make him feel that his gifts or his presence are unwanted, or explain anything at all. He tucks his coat beneath his arm, and firmly ignoring the gathering, uneasy feeling that he is about to do something above himself that he does not deserve, opens the snuffbox, and takes a pinch.

It is fine snuff -- or was -- but it has been three months in his pocket, of course, and it is dry as desert sand despite the good make of the box; he grits his teeth for a second that feels like an eternity before he can resist it no longer and barely manages to turn his head aside in time to avoid sneezing directly in Valjean's face. And he sneezes again, and again, as if he were some young idiot who had never taken snuff before in his life, until there are almost tears in his eyes from the force of it and he feels like he has put a jar of pepper up his nose. He is understandably not at his best; that is undoubtedly why it takes him a moment to identify the low, rusty sound only audible when his sneezes die down at last: Valjean is laughing.

"Yes, well," Javert says with some irritation, putting the snuffbox back in its pocket and removing a handkerchief from it instead, wiping his nose and eyes. "Perhaps it has been a while."

"I am sorry," Valjean says, and gently clasps Javert about the wrist. He does not sound sorry, but as Javert does not particularly wish him to, that is just as well. "Come and sit down."

Javert stuffs the handkerchief back into his coat, fingering his notebook for reassurance as he does, then suffers himself to be led by the hand into Valjean's small sitting-room. His coat goes over the back of the sofa; Valjean sits on it beside him, his knee touching Javert's and their hands still clasped; and, for one long, unexamined moment, Javert finds himself triumphantly happy.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm sorry for everything


End file.
